This book reconceives disability as a set of social relations and practices, as experienced embodiment, and as an emancipatory movement, as well as a biomedical phenomenon. The author brings new attention to complex ethical questions surrounding disability, looking at not only the biomedical understanding of impairment, but also its cultural representations and social organization.

Mitochondrial replacement techniques are intended to avoid the transmission of mitochondrial diseases from mother to child. MRT represent a potentially powerful new biomedical technology with ethical, policy, economic and social implications. Among other ethical questions raised are concerns about the possible effects on the identity of children born from MRT, their families, and the providers or donors of mitochondria. It has been suggested that MRT can influence identity directly, through altering the genetic makeup and physical characteristics of the child, or (...) indirectly through changing the child's experience of disease, and by generating novel intrafamilial relationships that shape the sense of self. In this article I consider the plausibility and ethical implications of these proposed identity effects, but I focus instead on a third way in which identity may be affected, through the mediating influence of the wider social world on MRT effects on identity. By taking a narrative approach, and examining the nature and availability of identity narratives, I conclude that while neither direct genetic nor indirect experiential effects can be excluded, social responses to MRT are more likely to have a significant and potentially damaging influence on the generation of MRT children's narratives of identity. This conclusion carries some implications for the collective moral responsibility we hold to ensure that MRT, if implemented, are practised in ethically justifiable ways. (shrink)

Susan has been profoundly deaf since childhood. She is a hearing aid wearer, and likes to use the induction loops built into some public spaces, such as theaters and cinemas, to help cut down the background noise that can make hearing speech very difficult. But this depends on the building having an induction loop fitted and properly maintained. Like many other induction loop users, Susan frequently finds that the advertised loop system is either working poorly or not working at all. (...) Almost as often, she then has the experience of making a complaint about it only to have the problem denied. If she persists, she is often then met... (shrink)

This paper is based on linked qualitative studies of the donation of human embryos to stem cell research carried out in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and China. All three studies used semi-structured interview protocols to allow an in-depth examination of donors’ and non-donors’ rationales for their donation decisions, with the aim of gaining information on contextual and other factors that play a role in donor decisions and identifying how these relate to factors that are more usually included in evaluations made (...) by theoretical ethics. Our findings have implications for one factor that has previously been suggested as being of ethical concern: the role of gratitude. Our empirical work shows no evidence that interpersonal gratitude is an important factor, but it does support the existence of a solidarity-based desire to “give something back” to medical research. Thus, we use empirical data to expand and refine the conceptual basis of bioethically theorizing the IVF–stem cell interface. (shrink)

When I used to walk all the time, and especially before I started using a stick, I found most people acted at best as if I was not there, and at worst as if I was a drunk who deserved all I got.… [They] found it particularly hard to deal with my speech impairment, especially if they met me when I was sitting down, and hence had no prior warning … they would go red, look away or sometimes even walk (...) off, leaving me in mid-sentence. None of this was calculated to enhance my self-esteem.Over the last forty years, the social and political status of disabled people has changed almost beyond recognition (Campbell and Oliver 1996; Shakespeare 2006). Movements to increase the social inclusion of disabled people are found .. (shrink)

This issue of IJFAB is based on papers from the Eighth International Congress of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB), held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in June 2012. The biennial congress is now solidly established as a key feature of the bioethics landscape, and is an important factor in the continuing growth of feminist bioethics. From the first gathering in San Francisco in 1996, FAB congresses have developed a reputation as lively, welcoming, challenging, and intellectually vibrant events that make a particular (...) effort to include the work of junior and emerging scholars in the field.Both the theme of the congress, Generations: Imagining the Future to Promote Health and Justice, and that open tradition of .. (shrink)

In November 2004, the Swiss population voted to accept a law on research using human embryonic stem cells. In this paper, we use Switzerland as a case study of the shaping of the ostensibly ethical debate on the use of embryos in embryonic stem cell research by legal, political and social constraints. We describe how the national and international context affected the content and wording of the law. We discuss the consequences of the revised law's separation of stem cell research (...) from other forms of embryo research, its definitions of embryo and of spare embryos, and the introduction of donorship into the Swiss ethical debate on IVF. We focus on the exclusion of the potential embryo donors' voices and perspectives from the debate, and consider the effects of this exclusion on ethical discourse and the political process. (shrink)

The Donchin and Holmes Emerging Scholar Prize was established in 2016 on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. The name of the prize honors the two cofounders of FAB, Anne Donchin and Helen Bequaert Holmes. Anne was Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Indiana University at the time of her death in 2014, and she had recruited Becky Holmes, a biologist and independent women’s studies scholar, to help set up (...) the first international network of feminists writing and researching in areas related to bioethics.Both Anne and Becky were strongly committed to what now tends to be called “building capacity”: a rather ugly description... (shrink)

The last few years have seen feminist bioethics experiencing a growing interest in the theme of disability: how bioethics as a whole can or should approach disability, and how the different perspectives brought by feminist bioethics can contribute to bioethical thinking about it. This interest was apparent in the pioneer work of disabled feminists such as Adrienne Asch, continued through the engagement of feminist theorists like Eva Feder Kittay, and appears more generally in feminist bioethics, for example in Jackie Leach (...) Scully's "Disability Bioethics," in the section on disability in Feminist Bioethics: At the Center, on the Margins (Scully, Baldwin-Ragaven, and Fitzpatrick 2010), and in IJFAB's special issue .. (shrink)